Tug Toy + You = Most Fun! (Etta Part 1)

Julie Hecht (human) and Etta (dog) enjoy bite work (Photo by Tom Brownlee)

As a kid, no one ever called out to me, “Julie! Stop that roughhousing!” Without younger relations to inflict terror upon or older siblings to run from, an only child like me can easily miss out on this interactive activity (unless, of course, the only child develops a complex relationship with their imaginary friends). I excelled in solitary activities; I conversed with my dolls, built intricate Lego forts and never had to share. My roughhousing with humans never officially started, and neither did my roughhousing with dogs. 

But somewhere along the line, something changed because I eagerly agreed to meet Tom Brownlee to do bite work with Etta. 

Tom Brownlee is a Master Trainer with the American Society of Canine Trainers (ASCT). They are considered the most technically advanced Law Enforcement Canine Training and Certifying Organization in the USA (do inspect their website).  

Tom’s training reaches not only dogs but also the students of the Human-Animal Bond Program at Carroll College (HAB). After gaining a foundation in canine physiology and cognition, students train dogs for various competencies like how to detect narcotics, alert when insulin levels drop in diabetic patients and turn off light switches. 

Dogs like Etta, an 8.5 year old Border Collie who lives and works with Tom, play an instrumental role in the education of HAB students. 

Tom's dogs - Pearl (left) and Etta (right)  (Photo by Tom Brownlee)

We all know that even “ordinary” dogs have jobs. For example, prior to flopping down, Hudson here assigned herself the job of household ball retriever and door barker.

Hudson taking a break from her "jobs"

But dog like Etta are in a different camp. She excels in narcotics detection, assistance work, bite work and suspect apprehension. Etta is a model for HAB students because they learn how to work alongside her as a handler, read her behavior and train other dogs in her image.

Working dogs like Etta recently gained intense scrutiny and praise since a “war dog” was linked to Bin Laden’s final take down. To date, War Dog, a photo essay released on May 4th, has received 86,174 ‘likes’ on facebook. These working dogs are described as having almost other-worldly abilities, parachuting in tandem, using their sniffers to detect anything and everything from people to bombs, and attacking and releasing on command. 

Scent work http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/war_dog?page=0,7

While Etta is trained to perform service assistance tasks, energy oozes from her body. She is an active dog attracted to motion. Unfortunately, most assistance tasks, besides “get help!” and “fire!”, are not about speed and motion. But bite work fits the bill. 

For many people, the word “bite work” might make little sense. After all, biting is thought by many to convey aggression and it certainly doesn't seem like work. Biting is bad, dangerous and to be avoided, right? Ask people what they picture when you say “bite work”, and they’ll probably describe an imagine of a malicious German Shepard soaring through the air with lots and lots of teeth exposed. It is a scene of fear, teeth and aggression, and maybe even some blood thrown on top. 

http://blog.seattlepi.com/pawsfurthought/category/german-shepherd/

And of course, they’ve got it all wrong. Bite work is about tapping into a dog’s interest in seeking, biting and shaking, all conducted in a controlled and organized fashion. It is also an activity that not all dogs are interested in. I am sure some people would be surprised to hear that Etta, a Border Collie, is a bite work fanatic. 

While most people are comfortable watching a dog grab onto a rope and biting and shaking, bite work, where a person wears a protective sleeve and the dog bites and shakes the sleeve, is less popular. But are the sleeve and the rope really different? 

To better understand bite work, let’s learn how it is trained. First engage a dog with a tug toy. Then morph the fixation onto a protective sleeve that the human wears on his/her arm.

http://www.belgian-malinois-dog-breed-store.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=203
Terminator body not included

The human becomes an interactive tug toy. Trainers can leave the dog on what is called “equipment fixation” so the game is not about tugging on a pant leg or an arm that is not equipped with the sleeve; the game is about the sleeve. The dog sees the sleeve and that’s where the fun is! They bite onto the sleeve and there is tugging, shaking and pulling. If the dog is to be used in real-world suspect apprehension, the dog moves off the equipment fixation and onto a hidden sleeve so they learn to latch onto parts of the body other than the sleeve.

As Tom notes, “people think you are training a dog to be aggressive. This is the most fun thing in Etta’s life.”  

And that’s why I excitedly met Tom and Etta and put on a sleeve. And it was the most fun for Etta and the most fun for me.

Bite work in action (Photo by Tom Brownlee)